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| AW’D by her own rash words she was still: and her eyes to the seaward | |
| Look’d for an answer of wrath: far off, in the heart of the darkness, | |
| Bright white mists rose slowly; beneath them the wandering ocean | |
| Glimmer’d and glow’d to the deepest abyss; and the knees of the maiden | |
| Trembled and sank in her fear, as afar, like a dawn in the midnight, | 5 |
| Rose from their seaweed chamber the choir of the mystical sea-maids. | |
| Onward toward her they came, and her heart beat loud at their coming, | |
| Watching the bliss of the gods, as waken’d the cliffs with their laughter. | |
| Onward they came in their joy, and before them the roll of the surges | |
| Sank, as the breeze sank dead, into smooth green foam-fleck’d marble, | 10 |
| Aw’d; and the crags of the cliff, and the pines of the mountain were silent. | |
| Onward they came in their joy, and around them the lamps of the sea nymphs, | |
| Myriad fiery globes, swam panting and heaving; and rainbows, | |
| Crimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star-showers, lighting | |
| Far through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus, | 15 |
| Coral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean. | |
| Onward they came in their joy, more white than the foam which they scatter’d, | |
| Laughing and singing, and tossing and twining, while eager, the Tritons | |
| Blinded with kisses their eyes, unreprov’d, and above them in worship | |
| Hover’d the terns, and the seagulls swept past them on silvery pinions | 20 |
| Echoing softly their laughter; around them the wantoning dolphins | |
| Sigh’d as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which bore them | |
| Curv’d up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the maiden, | |
| Pawing the spray into gems, till the fiery rainfall, unharming, | |
| Sparkled and gleam’d on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of the mermen. | 25 |
| Onward they went in their joy, bath’d round with the fiery coolness, | |
| Needing nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal: but others, | |
| Pitiful, floated in silence apart; in their bosoms the sea-boys, | |
| Slain by the wrath of the seas, swept down by the anger of Nereus; | |
| Hapless, whom never again on strand or on quay shall their mothers | 30 |
| Welcome with garlands and vows to the temple, but wearily pining | |
| Gaze over island and bay for the sails of the sunken; they heedless | |
| Sleep in soft bosoms forever, and dream of the surge and the sea-maids. | |
| Onward they pass’d in their joy; on their brows neither sorrow nor anger; | |
| Self-sufficing, as gods, never heeding the woe of the maiden. | 35 |
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